I wasn't liking Phnom Penh much. My quest was a bust, I was uncomfortable even in a pool hall, and I had no desire to make friends with the people staying near me. I shot off an email to the Aussie telling him it was a good try and switched hostels to a better area. I booked a bus for the next morning to see Angkor Wat. I headed to bed and found an email waiting for me from aswa (I found out aswa means 'danger' in malay, no idea if that is the origin).
He said I had spoken to the wrong bartender: I was supposed to find Srey Ra, not Joon Lee. He had emptied the bag knowing it might not last, and had given everything to the person he trusted. She would have a second bag for me to go with the first. I was leaving in six hours. I hopped in a tuk-tuk and headed back to the laughing fat man.
Srey Ra was behind the bar. Aswa would message her, then message me, then Srey Ra would ask me a few questions. It took 20 minutes of this before she ducked behind a counter and pulled out a shopping bag that had been stapled shut. It had a tag with my reddit username on it. I pulled things out one by one, with Srey Ra bursting in to laughter occasionally.
Dear borderline anonymous internet person. I will attempt to leave as much knowledge as possible within this note. I have left a couple of notes. They barely scratch the surface. Discover explore, learn and teach. Pass anything you don't want to someone who does.
Good luck.
He had a page on places to visit in Phnom Penh, a list of the islands, a map of the area with notes like 'town run by mafia. FEAR THE RUSSIANS HERE!', 'this border post will rob you blind. AVOID!'. Following was a list of 'people of interest'. That day I had met a guy named 'G'. He was a skinny Canadian who rides around on a white Harley Davidson. He stopped by the hostel daily offering weed to the guests. I saw him maybe 5-6 times a day. One girl commented that he had been trying to get one of her friends to go out on a tour of the city with him. He was going for that vagrant 'zen master of wisdom' vibe. The people of interest included:
G - tall, skinny Canadian. To be honest he looks like a skeloton. He is a f***ing psycho, avoid at all costs.
I asked Srey Ra what she knew about G. She said he was a very bad man, that he loses his temper and explodes a lot, which is a big crime in Cambodian culture.
He also listed 'Mr. P', who can 'make problems...go away' and can get huge discounts at the shooting range, where you can fire machine guns and rocket launchers, or for $300 you can toss grenades at a live cow. And there was 'Kessara', a homeless man selling wallets. I would really have liked to find him; the 'history of Cambodia' he had in his head would have told me a lot about the Pol Pot years. I had just visited the killing fields that day.
The rest of the bag included: utensils, a makeshift medical kit, a strong lock, weed with paper and a grinder, sunscreen, bug spray, a power strip, a quiz game about Holland, an eyeglass case full of coins, a manicure kit, business cards with notes on who to talk to, and my personal favorite: a sealed bottle of rice wine with a cobra biting a scorpion inside.
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